South Korea's economy is facing rising inflationary pressures, the country's top state think-tank said Monday.

"The South Korean economy recently appears to face a gradual realization of inflationary pressure amid the continuing improvement in employment and economic stabilization," the Korea Development Institute (KDI) said in its monthly report on the latest economic conditions at home and abroad.

The report comes after the Bank of Korea (BOK) kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 2.75 percent last week. Among 6 analysts surveyed by Xinhua after the rate-setting meeting, all the respondents expected the BOK to raise the borrowing costs in March by a quarter percentage point to 3.00 percent.

South Korea's consumer price index (CPI) climbed 4.1 percent in January from a year earlier, breaching the upper end of the BOK's target range. Producer price inflation gained 6.2 percent in January from a year before, the fastest growth in more than two years.

"Some developing countries including China showed a rapid rise in the inflation rate affected by the relatively sharp increase in international oil prices, which triggered the possibility of negative impacts on the recent ongoing modest recovery of the global economy," the KDI said.

"Some developing countries such as China have implemented tightening measures such as raising key interest rates in response to the growing inflationary pressure, but major advanced economies have maintained the expansionary policy stance," it added.